Póg Mo Goal Issue 1

PÓG MO GOAL ISSUE 1 2014

CONTENTS

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Capturing the Airtricity League Photographer and St. Patrick’s Athletic supporter Billy Galligan documents the Saints vs Cork City from Richmond Park

Vasava Barcelona FC Typeface The Barcelona-based design agency Vasava’s custom typeface for the Catalan club

The World’s Most Iconic Boot Adidas Copa Mundial is one of the world’s most popular football boots

Cruyff Vs the Three Stripes Johan Cruyff took on the Dutch FA and Adidas at the 1974 World Cup in Germany

Proclaiming the Republic The first time the Republic of Ireland played under the name since leaving the British commonwealth after the 1916 revolution

He is Zlatan He divides opinion but the giant Swedish striker is an undeniable talent

Fantasy Kit Design The growing trend of fan influence on the design of football clubs’ kits

The US Academy Soccer in the United States has adapted a uniquely American system for youth development

To the Five Boroughs Life for the New York Cosmos since the relaunch hype died down

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O Canarinho The most iconic shirt in football history and how the Brazil national team came to wear the famous colours

Die Zerbrechlichkeit Des Glücks Known as the 4 minute Championship in Germany, Schalke 04 were champions for mere minutes until disaster struck

Gabriel Uchida The Brazilian photo journalist follows supporters, ultras, and hooligans in his native country

Dave Merrell The stunning work of the Manchester-based illustrator

1 Fan One Vote League of Ireland sides lead the way in fan ownership and involvement with clubs

The English Disease?

Donal Fallon gives an in-depth look at hooliganism in Irish sport in the 1970s and 80s

Another 48 Hours Layth Yousif spends two days with Sky Sports’ roving reporter Johnny Philips

Contributors Kie Carew James Carew Ron Ulrich Diarmuid O hAinle Layth Yousif Luke Constable Donal Fallon Dave Merrell Billy Galligan Gabriel Uchida Dan Leydon The Printi Printer Jorge Lawerta Thanks Christine Walther at FC Schalke 04 David Hochman at New York Cosmos Nick Laveglia at the Borough Boys Enric Godes at Vasava Sophie Sinkinson at Adidas Lucas Funke Editors James Carew Kie Carew Layout & Design Kie Carew Follow Us facebook.com/pogmogoal twitter.com/pogmogoal Contact hello@pogmogoal.com Cover Design Tiki-Taka by Kie Carew Copyright 2014 Póg Mo Goal No part of this magazine may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted without permission from the publisher.

The Diablo Rouge With a Divine Gift Layth Yousif on Enzo Scifo’s forgotten goal at the 1990 World Cup in Italy

Zidane: A Fraction of the Whole The artistry and genius of the great Zizou in one piece of skill from Euro 2000

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Airtricity League St Pats 2-1 Cork City July 26, 2013.

Photographer Billy Galligan is a St Pats fan and can be found sitting pitch side at most home games and also a few away ones. www.amanwithhiscamera.com

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Inspired by the cuts and angles of the chimneys on the sentinels of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi’s Pedrera, Barcelonabased design agency Vasava’s custom typeface for Barcelona FC and Nike. www.vasava.es

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THE WORLD’S MOST ICONIC BOOT

Released in 1979 and designed for the World Cup in Spain in 1982, the Adidas “Copa Mundial” is one of the world’s most popular football boots. The kangaroo leather footwear made in the Adidas testing factory in the town of Scheinfeld, Germany, is one of the most iconic sports shoes in history.

The timeless black and white design has been the footballer’s choice at all levels for over three decades, worn by legends throughout the years from Der Kaiser; Franz Beckenbauer to the majestic Zinedine Zidane. Former Republic of Ireland assistant coach Marco Tardelli scored in the ‘82 World Cup final in Spain wearing the Copa Mundials. His emotional celebration is one of the best loved moments in World Cup history.

In the 1986 tournament in Mexico, England’s Gary Lineker won the Golden Boot scoring six goals in the footwear before Maradona’s genius and the hand of God knocked them out of the tournament.

The “World Cup” edition of the boot features screw in studs as opposed to the moulded version of the “Copa Mundial”. In September 2013, the German sportswear giants released a special edition white colourway of the classic firm ground boot. A Samba-inspired range in multiple colours was released in the lead up to the World Cup in Brazil, but it is the simple, clean and crisp black and white design that makes it an archetypal piece of football history.

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CRUYFF VS THE THREE STRIPES

Johan Cruyff turning Argentinian defenders inside out is among the enduring images of the 1974 World Cup in Germany. The final in Munich’s Olympiastadion between Holland and the hosts ranks among the great games in the tournament’s history. The sight of the Dutchman wearing his Adidas kit with only two stripes down the sleeves instead of the famous three, illustrates one of the great World Cup stories.

Cruyff had an exclusive deal with Puma, the bitter rivals of Holland’s kit supplier Adidas. A family feud saw the Dassler brothers in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, Germany, split their company to form the two sports equipment behemoths. During the World Cup in Germany, Johan Cruyff and the Royal Dutch Football Association went to war over the renowned brand with the three stripes.

Leading up to the 1974 finals, a number of footballers were battling with their federations over financial disputes and the three time Ballon d’Or winner was never one to shy away from controversy either. He was famously said to smoke 20 a day during his playing days and was the first Dutch international to receive a red card for allegedly slapping the referee in only his second appearance.

Having won his battle with the KNVB over the stripes, the headstrong Cruyff was allowed to wear a customised version of the famous Oranje shirt.

Dan Leydon is an illustrator whose clients include Nike, ESPN & KICKTV. His work has been featured in The Guardian, The Telegraph, FHM & Match of the Day. www.danleydon.com

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PROCLAIMING THE REPUBLIC Words: James Carew Illustration: Kie Carew

On April 18th 1949, Easter Monday, the anniversary of the 1916 uprising, Ireland officially declared itself a Republic and left the British commonwealth. A week later, the national team played Belgium at Dalymount Park but it would be a further five years before it would play under the name ‘Republic’. The use of the terms Ireland and Republic of Ireland has traditionally been fraught with controversy owing to the delicate political sensibilities here, and the two football teams on the island have been no strangers to that friction.

Since 1882, Irish football had been governed by one association, the Belfastbased Irish Football Association, the IFA. In the midst of the trauma of the War of Independence and partition, the selection of the Irish national team became increasingly politicised and a new body, the Football Association of Ireland was founded in September 1921 in Dublin splitting from the IFA and organising its own league and national team. The southern body joined FIFA two years later as the Football Association of the Irish Free State but re-adopted the name Football Association of Ireland in 1936. From then until 1954, they played as Ireland; and since ‘54 they have been the Republic of Ireland following the renaming of the team by the world governing body FIFA. However, back in 1949, the Republic of Ireland Act had become law on the symbolic day of Easter Monday and was greeted with a military parade on O’Connell Street and a 19 gun salute.

Six days later, just over 28,000 filed into Dalymount Park to witness the soccer team lose 2-0 to Belgium in a friendly still under the name ‘Ireland’. The home side were captained by the legendary Johnny Carey, who had also skippered the IFA XI. A year earlier, Carey had become the first Irishman to captain an FA Cup winning side leading Matt Busby’s Manchester United to victory over Blackpool at Wembley.

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The following season, the Dubliner was voted “Footballer of the Year” and in 1950 he would be nominated as Britain’s “Sportsman of the Year”. Two years after that he would lead United to their first league title in four decades. Ireland had slumped to an unexpected loss to Switzerland the previous December prompting the FAI selection committee to plump for six League of Ireland players for the visit of the Belgians, managed

by Englishman Bill Gormlie. Belgium had also provided the opposition for the Free State’s début in the FIFA World Cup in a 1934 qualifier in Dublin. That game finished 4-4 with Paddy Moore grabbing all of the Irish goals becoming the first player ever to score four in a World Cup game. This time, the inexperienced Irish side crashed to a 2-0 defeat conceding twice in the second half to strikes from Victor Lemberechts and Jef Mermans.

The result saw the FAI selectors turn to Carey for advice, making him the de facto coach, mindful that more professional preparation was needed with the 1950 World Cup qualifying series about to get underway. A first win as the new political entity would come the following month in a home friendly with Portugal.

The campaign to reach the finals in Brazil began in June with a 4-1 loss to Sweden in Stockholm. The fledging Ireland then took on Spain in a friendly in Dalymount the same month suffering another 4-1 defeat.

The Road to Rio got back on track with a 3-0 home win over Finland and the next game was a friendly away to England in September 1949. The match didn’t take place in Wembley however. The venue was Goodison Park where Ireland recorded one of her most famous victories, a first ever defeat for the English on home-soil by a foreign side. Several of the Irish team in Goodison in 1949 had played against England before while representing the IFA, including striker Davy Walsh who had previously scored three times against the old enemy. Three years earlier, the FAI Ireland had played England for the first time at Dalymount

Park losing to a Tom Finney winner in the 82nd minute. This time on Merseyside, Ireland struck twice through a Con Martin penalty and a second half goal from Peter Farrell to record a famous victory, at least on this side of the Irish Sea. Even today there is some dispute in English circles as to whether Hungary’s Magical Magyars’ 6-3 win at Wembley in 1953 represents the first loss on home soil by a foreign team. The argument is that the Irish side that won 2-0 claimed authority over the IFA selection and therefore allowed some to paint them as a ‘home nation’ until FIFA’s definitive intervention in 1953.

Up until the 1950 qualifiers, the IFA and FAI disputed jurisdiction over the entire island and sought to select players from both north and south under the name Ireland. It was only when both associations entered the qualifiers four players Tom Aherne, Reg Ryan, Davy Walsh, and Con Martin actually represented the two teams in the same qualifying competition - that FIFA intervened and restricted the eligibility of players on the basis of the political border. Then, in 1953 the world governing body decreed that neither team could be referred to as Ireland for the World Cup and, subsequently, the European Nations Cup. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were born as football entities.

As the national side strove to make its mark on the global stage by reaching the World Cup, the first game as the Republic of Ireland saw a win over Norway in Dublin in November of the following year. The team had finally taken the title declared by the nation in Easter week, 1949.

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HE IS ZLATAN Words & Illustration: Kie Carew

He stalked the Lansdowne Road turf on a drizzly night in September. He threaded the decisive ball for Anders Svensson to score Sweden’s winning goal that ended Ireland’s World Cup 2014 qualification hopes and ultimately Giovanni Trapattoni’s tenure as manager.

His every touch was met with whistles and jeers from the Aviva stadium crowd. A sure sign the watching Irish fans were aware of the Swede’s imposing threat.

He jogged languidly around the Dublin arena but was able to pull the strings and dictate the Swedish attacks.

His frame towered over the Ireland defenders with only the battle-hardened Richard Dunne looking like he could take on the 6ft 5in striker.

The Scandinavian’s perceived arrogance seemed to precede him. Zlatan was covered in tattoos. His boot sponsor Nike even had a custom made jacket tailored to include replications of his inked artwork on the back.

Lionel Messi had only one tattoo at the time. Of his mother. Messi and Ibrahimovic’s opposing images did not sit well side by side and the two only played in the same team for one season before Zlatan went back to Milan. This time to the Rossoneri. He would go on to have a great season for AC, winning the Serie A Footballer of the Year award amid comparisons with club legend Marco Van Basten by both the media and the great Dutchman himself.

He is a winner. He is a champion. He is Zlatan.

Ibrahimovic holds a black belt in Taekwondo since his teens. He has even managed to use his martial arts techniques to score some gravity-defying goals including his incredible 30 yard bicycle kick against England, which won the 2013 FIFA Puskás Award.

The son of a Bosnian Muslim father and Croatian Catholic mother began his career at hometown club Malmo FF before moving to Ajax of Amsterdam.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic won his first league title when Ajax claimed the Eredivisie in 2002 under coach Ronald Koeman. The Swedish captain has captured league crowns wherever he has played; two Eredivisie titles with Ajax, the Serie A with Juventus, AC Milan and three Scudettos in a row with cross city rivals Internazionale.

He won La Liga after one season in Barcelona and has won the Ligue 1 Championship with current club Paris Saint Germain. He divides opinion but wherever he has played, Ibrahimovic has been a winner. His transfer to Barcelona from Inter Milan for €46 million with Samuel Eto’o going in the opposite direction was the start of a difficult period at the Nou Camp club. In many ways it was seen as a way for Pep Guardiola to off-load a player he viewed as troublesome from his dressing room. The Cameroonian had a formidable record for the Blaugrana and the astronomical fee for Ibrahimovic added on to what was effectively a swap deal for Eto’o, raised the eyebrows of many in the football world.

While at Barcelona, Zlatan claimed that his relationship with Pep Guardiola had deteriorated and the coach had not spoken to him in months. The Barca philosophy of Tika Taka football was winning admirers around the world at this time and the Swede did not seem like a good fit for this system. His prickly persona and Pep’s reputation as one of football’s nice guys meant many viewed Ibrahimovic as an egotistical bad boy, a reputation that seemed to follow him around Europe his whole playing career. He claims that the World Cup in Brazil will not be worth watching without his presence.

His autobiography is called simply, “I am Zlatan”.

Ibrahimovic is supremely confident and this trait is often seen as arrogance, but it is this extraordinary self-belief that has driven the striker to become one of the best footballers in the world today.

Ibra’s ego and Lionel Messi’s humble nature made for headlines that the little Argentine and the giant Swede did not get on. Ibrahimovic was relegated to the wing while Messi became the main man when the Catalan club adopted a 4-5-1 in favour of the 4-3-3 formation.

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FANTASY KIT DESIGN

DESIGN HAS ALWAYS BEEN NECESSARY IN FOOTBALL, AS IT IS IN EVERY ORGANISED PURSUIT. FROM THE LAYOUT OF A PITCH TO THE ARCHITECTURAL MAKEUP OF THE STADIUM, FROM THE LINESMAN’S FLAG TO THE COLOURING OF THE REFEREE’S DISCIPLINARY PROPS, DESIGN HAS ALWAYS PLAYED AN INTEGRAL PART. YET THESE DETAILS, THESE VITAL CONSIDERATIONS, BARELY REGISTER ON THE RADAR OF THE MAJORITY LOOKING TO FOOTBALL FOR AESTHETIC GRATIFICATION. ONE AREA REIGNS Words: Diarmuid O hAinle

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OOTBALL KITS, AND IN THIS CONTEXT “KITS” IS USUALLY BIZARRELY AND ERRONEOUSLY SYNONYMOUS WITH “SHIRTS”, ARE MORE THAN EVER BEFORE CRITIQUED, DEBATED, LAUDED AND CONDEMNED. They are also bought more than ever before, if we take the Premier League to represent the present. My own research of sales worldwide doesn’t confirm the widely reported “billion dollar industry”, not quite, but it’s undoubtedly a profitable caper. So the design is all-important. In the 1960s and 70s, the few shirts on sale were largely free from flourishes. A contrasting colour collar here, a v-neck there, a fully embroidered club crest versus a simple initialism or complete bypass of further identification beyond the famous red, blue or white.

As a football fan, a fan of a particular team, if the availability existed then the decision was straightforward: Do I want to wear my club’s shirt or not?

Things have moved on. Now we ask, do I want that shirt? And not even necessarily the shirt of one’s beloved.

Whether it’s for fives, for matchday colours or for Hoxton irony, there is a consideration of what the shirt conveys.

The colours, the pattern, the crest, the collar, the size of the sponsor, the colour of the sponsor, the sponsor. Not forgetting, the loyal season ticket holder needs convincing to refresh a wardrobe every year and the manufacturer’s clout also often overrides the sartorial accomplishment. Umbro provided Hearts with classic and timeless shirts, equally not short of measured originality, during their ‘Tailored By’ years, sales of which were immediately dwarfed by phonedin replacements carrying Adidas’ three stripes along the shoulders. But that statement is sprinkled with opinions.

And when we appraise design we also imagine how we could improve on it.

That’s where the internet comes in.

Amateur kit design is more popular than ever, its curve far more upward than that of kit sales. And the impact is growing.

The mulling over of shirt and shorts-andsocks combinations on early 90s video games has progressed, via Football Manager templates and club message boards, to dedicated websites such as DesignFootball.com, and one of the most popular sections of its football kit news sister site FootballShirtCulture.com.

It has also progressed, in ever-increasing evidence, to an impact on real life football kits.

Diarmuid O hAinle is curator of Design Football, the website devoted to football design, showcasing amateur football shirt, kit and boot designs. www.designfootball.com

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Amateur or fledgling designers with an interest in football can share a Twitter image of a print design which can convert to a work of art, of varying quality, then, occasionally, can reap the benefits by putting the print into on-demand production. Our timelines are clogged with beautiful two dimensional representations of football legends and iconography, cleverly styled for the appreciation of DIY interior design-enthusiast hipsters. For football kit designers a leg-up is required, at least for those unable to call in favours from textile factory owners. An established club or manufacturer needs to seek out or harness the abilities on offer.

The seeking out and harnessing often comes by way of fan consultation, votes or fan design competitions to either provide the following season’s kit or inform it in some way. This is an event which is either intended as a PR exercise, where an eventual sub-rate amateur kit being produced is a small price to pay for the newsworthy fan-friendly gesture as a whole, or, and this is where it gets fun, it actually leads to an iconic kit that would never have seen the light of day if the task hadn’t been put in the hands of those who care so deeply about the club. Fan input has, in recent timess, led to Bolton Wanderers changing shirt sponsors, on moral grounds rather than aesthetic, Everton abandoning a new crest and asking for their supporters help, ostensibly, in creating its replacement, and Cardiff City, prior to their first appearance in the Premier League, changing their shorts back to black from red - even if they’re yet to change their shirts back to blue. This is in addition to MLS teams and European sides as big as Olympique de Marseille turning out in fan-designed kits by way of competitions and votes.

For people around my really-shouldknow-better age, the year dot was the seemingly inauspicious event of Steve Nicol’s testimonial in 1993. At the time, Shoot magazine ran a competition to design the kit Liverpool’s opponents, a Great Britain XI, would wear, and schoolboys frantically went to work with their felt tips and colouring pencils.

(The disappointment of falling short has never quite left me, even when a design of mine for the 2012 Team GB incarnation was picked up by the Talksport website to moderate critical acclaim). Rumour has it that the reversible Umbro Manchester United centenary kit (gold on one side, white on the other) from a decade ago was the work of a fan but whilst we’re yet to hit those dizzying heights again, the present regularity demonstrates, most notably when DesignFootball.com membership is the lowest common denominator, a trend with impressive results.

Argentinian club Tigre debuted in the 2013 Copa Libertadores wearing a competition-winning design courtesy of a DF member and the rise of futsal in the UK has benefited from striking and well-received kits produced via competitions hosted on the site.

Kilmarnock defeating Celtic in the 2012 League Cup final? In a yellow change kit, the work of a Killie fan, and DF member, who describes himself as “mostly a science teacher, rarely a football kit designer”. AFC Wimbledon, in their second Football League season post-resurrection? Both kits designed by amateurs, via competitions, at least one a DF member. Even when the applicable administrations are bypassed, which we would never condone, the impact is quite literally tangible. It’s one thing Twitter going wild for what’s understood to be Nike drawing board designs of a white and gold England kit, nope, a fantasy design uploaded to DF, quite another when the most popular “leaked” Liverpool shirt for the 2011-12 season, the yellow one with red pinstripes, is not an Adidas prototype but a design uploaded to DF, then seemingly appropriated by counterfeiters in the Far East who put it into production before making it available to be worn, as it was, in the stands. Ditto an Atletico Madrid shirt based around a Barcelona template, a story made famous on Reddit and which began on the Fantasy Kit Designs area of FootballShirtCulture.com.

Even an indoor soccer team from Texas made a roaring trade in Black Swan referencing modifications to Adidas teamwear, properly suiting up “Portman Kunis United”. Little wonder the clubs and manufacturers are keener than ever to take on board ideas from the fans and amateurs. The bottom line rules. The only possible downside, from my perspective, is that the current major release shirts, by the professionals, are better than ever.

It was something that I held my head in my hands over, paranoid that amateur kit design would be crushed by the resource-heavy design teams at Nike, Adidas, Puma and, until very recently, outwardly resurgent Umbro all upping their game. And then along came Warrior, like an angel that got dressed in the dark. Even when the top teams are getting great kits - which includes Liverpool’s current Home, if not their change equivalents, it’s the occasional disasters which keep the amateurs in the hunt, defying the status quo with their unmistakable talent.

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THE US ACADEMY

AFTER 14 MINUTES OF A 4-0 VICTORY AWAY TO LEVANTE IN NOVEMBER 2012, WHEN AN INJURED DANI ALVES WAS SUBSTITUTED BY MARTIN MONTOYA, BARCELONA FOOTBALL CLUB FIELDED AN ENTIRELY HOMEGROWN 11.

The club’s famous youth academy La Masia has nurtured some of the world’s top talent including Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta and four time World Player of the Year Lionel Messi. Victor Valdes, Martin Montoya, Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique, Jordi Alba, Xavi, Sergio Busquets, Andres Iniesta, Pedro, Lionel Messi and Cesc Fabregas made up the eleven on the field in the Ciutat de Valencia stadium that night. While Messi grew up in Rosario, Argentina, he joined Barca at the age of 11 and is most certainly a product of La Masia’s school of football. Gerard Pique grew up five minutes away from the Nou Camp stadium and came back from Manchester United in 2008 to play for the Blaugrana. Cesc Fabregas’ return from Arsenal in 2011 and Jordi Alba’s rebound from Valencia a year later completed the team of Barcelona’s academy graduates.

La Masia was originally built as an 18th century country estate and is today dwarfed by the Nou Camp stadium it sits beside. The building housed the young players from outside of the city and the stone farm house has become a symbol of Barcelona FC’s famous tiki-taka philosophy. The academy has since moved out of the old structure to the nearby village of Sant Joan Despi. It was former playing great Johan Cruyff’s return to Barcelona as manager and his commitment to possession based football, that revolutionised the Spanish game and overhauled the club’s youth academy. A preference for physically strong players was in place until Cruyff instilled his vision of players who could keep the ball.

MLS CLUBS’ ACADEMIES ARE STARTING TO REAP THE REWARDS OF PUTTING IN PRACTICE A SYSTEM THAT IS TAILORED TO AMERICAN CULTURE. Words: Kie Carew

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Around 300 boys between the ages of 7-18 are enrolled in the Barcelona youth academy and all play the same brand of football as the first team. The philosophy runs throughout the club.

In the Champions League final against Manchester United in Rome in 2009 Barcelona had eight starters who came from the La Masia academy. The European and World Cup successes of the Spanish national team are also based on the Barcelona style of play.

Spain won the World Cup in 2010 with seven players from La Masia.

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In England probably the most famous crop of youngsters was the Manchester United FA Youth Cup winning team of 1992. The side which is now the subject of a documentary called the Class of 92, included David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Gary and Phil Neville, Nicky Butt and Ryan Giggs. All went on to have glittering careers at Old Trafford. The club has always had a reputation for nurturing home-grown talent. Crewe Alexandra FC in Cheshire and East London’s West Ham United’s youth academies are also well regarded in England. David Platt, Rob Jones and Danny Murphy all came through the Crewe Alex academy. West Ham’s youth development program became known simply as The Academy because of its pedigree in producing young talent. Paul Ince, Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick and Jermaine Defoe all cut their teeth playing at the Hammer’s famous Upton Park ground.

Having competed in the league since its inception in 1996 as one of the original ten MLS charter clubs, the New England Revolution are seeing the rewards of its youth development academy.

In 2010, Uruguayan born 16-year-old Diego Fagundez was signed by the club. He was the first youth player to sign for the Revs senior side from their own academy. Fagundez splits his time attending high school and training with the Revolution first team. With his mohawk haircut and boyish good looks, the homegrown favourite has become a teenage heart throb for the local Boston fans and is a star for the MLS club. The diminutive 19-year-old became the youngest player to line out for the side and his impressive stats made him a darling of the crowd at the Gilette Stadium, which the club share with Tom Brady’s New England Patriots of the NFL. Recognized by US Soccer as the top youth academy in the country, the Revs’ academy includes former US star and New England record goal scorer Taylor Twellman on its coaching roster. The Massachusetts-based outfit offers the unique opportunity for youth team players who go on to college to train with the club on school breaks. The best players in the academy have the chance, like Fagundez, to sign for the club and not go through the MLS Superdraft. The Homegrown Player Rule was introduced in 2008 allowing MLS teams to sign local players from their own academies. Until the rule was created, every player would enter the Superdraft with no guarantee of ending up playing with the team that nurtured them.

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In 2003, the Cleveland Cavaliers signed LeBron James with their first round pick in the NBA draft held in Madison Square Garden. He was only the second player selected straight out of high school.

As the number 1 pick in the draft, James would earn $18 million over four years and is one of the greatest and most famous basketballers in history. He joined a team that had not been to the playoffs in over five years and had won only 17 games out of 82 the previous year. The Ohio native led his high school, St. Vincent-St Mary to three state championships. ‘King James’ as he would go on to be known brought the Cavs to their first ever finals appearance in 2007 and left as a free agent in 2010.

The 6ft 8in forward went on to win two finals and MVP two years-in-a-row with the Miami Heat.

The 2003 NBA draft in New York City was considered one of the most talented player pools to pick from in draft history.

Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James all went on to win NBA Championship rings and Olympic medals. The draft is held every year for the teams that missed out on a playoff spot. The lottery process decides the order of the teams that will pick from the most talented players graduating that year. The worst team the previous season has a higher chance of winning first pick with more balls representing the franchise included in the lottery draw. In 1985 the New York Knicks selected Patrick Ewing. Shaquille O’Neal was selected by Orlando Magic in 1992. Allen Iverson in 1996 went to the Philadelphia 76ers and Derrick Rose joined the Chicago Bulls in 2008.

The MLS Superdraft combines the MLS College draft and Supplemental Draft and was first introduced in 2000. The clubs’ playoff and regular season positions determine the order of the pick with the last placed team or expansion franchises getting first draft pick. The draft is designed to ensure a level playing field in the league with the winners of the MLS Cup getting the last pick in the draft. Included in the MLS Superdraft are players from the Project 40 / Generation Adidas program.

The first year of the draft featured 71 picks and former Reading and United States winger Bobby Convey was selected by DC United through the program. The project is a joint venture

by Adidas and the US Soccer Federation aimed at enhancing the level of talent in youth soccer in the United States.

It promotes players without college graduation and gives them the chance to reach the Superdraft entry.

SOCCER IN THE USA WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE SEEN AS ANOMALOUS WHEN COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE WORLD

The program was called Project 40 when it was run by Nike until 2005 when Adidas signed a ten year $150 million dollar contract with the league.

A new eight-year deal was agreed in 2010 believed to be worth $200 million. The agreement put more emphasis on youth development, academy and reserve team programs for all of the MLS franchises.

The Generation Adidas program players can earn a higher salary than the league minimum because when they enter the program they are immediately classed as professional players. Should they fail to make it onto the roster of an MLS team, the players are guaranteed a scholarship to play college soccer.

The Project 40 / Generation Adidas program has proven highly successful producing players such as Tim Howard, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey and Brad Guzan.

With no promotion and relegation in the league because of the large cost expansion franchises have to pay to enter, the MLS Cup playoffs follow the lead of the other Major American sports.

While the Superdraft system might seem unfamiliar to European fans, it is part of the American sports landscape. The NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB drafts are entrenched in the history of the four major sports in America. For the fledgling league to take root in the United States when it formed in 1996, ignoring these American sporting traditions would surely have had a negative impact on the then black sheep of the US Major Leagues. Going to college is widely seen as part of American culture and the draft route into professional sports means that soccer in the USA was always going to be seen as anomalous when compared to the rest of the world. Research suggests it takes up to 10,000 hours of football training to develop players of professional calibre. For MLS teams, the academies are the only way to reach the target goal of this amount of training to develop athletes. Signing kids and developing them at a young age in the philosophy of the club is the only way for them to catch up to their European counterparts when it comes to developing world-class talent.

The combination of the draft and the youth academies is sure to be the way teams sign players in the future for MLS and its clubs.

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TO THE FIVE BOROUGHS

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AFTER THE MUCH HYPED 2010 RELAUNCH OF THE NEW YORK COSMOS, THE DUST HAS SETTLED AND THE CLUB IS NOW ADAPTING TO LIFE AS A FULLY-FORMED OUTFIT. Words: Kie Carew

A famous son of New York City, Chuck D once urged that we “Don’t Believe the Hype”. Following the fanfare that greeted the relaunch of the New York Cosmos in 2010, with billboards in Times Square and Eric Cantona’s appointment as Director of Football, came the realisation that the club had no stadium and no team. It was a brand before it was a football outfit.

The hipster’s choice was fuelled by innovative marketing

by Umbro, kitting out a side that didn’t exist and would not play a competitive game for three years after its comeback. The conceptual-led merchandise, including a 1977 New York City Blackout-inspired range, would eventually fill the rails in discount store TK Maxx.

The team where Pele, Carlos Alberto, and Franz Beckenbauer played in front of capacity crowds in both Yankee Stadium and the Giants Stadium has a rich history that captured the imagination of the United States in the late 1970’s before dissolving in 1985. The unsustainable league soon followed. But the affection for the Cosmos name from fans around the world fuelled ambitions that they could be the second team to rival the New York Red Bulls.

With the announcement in 2013 that the Yankees and Manchester City-backed New York City FC would take the 20th MLS expansion franchise, the Cosmos has settled into life playing in the NASL. Effectively the second tier of professional soccer in the United States, the NASL was relaunched in 2009. Playing their home games on Long Island in Hofstra University’s stadium, but with ambitious plans for a $400 million purposebuilt 25,000 seater arena in Belmont Park, the Cosmos Part Two set attendance records and won the NASL Soccer Bowl in their first season back in the league, along the way cementing the affection New Yorkers hold for the famous club.

The Borough Boys supporters group was formed by Big Apple natives Nick Laveglia and Paul Morabito with the aim of bringing an MLS team to within the five boroughs of New York City. With the Cosmos relaunch, the Borough Boys established themselves as the club’s supporters group. Now with more than 1000 official members, Nick confirms the regard the city has for the Cosmos. “When some of the Borough Boys and I hit the pubs and bars to start urging fans to help fight for a team to call our own in the city, interest was low. When the New York Cosmos came back on the scene, we hit the bars again and when we brought up the name Cosmos the mood of the people we were talking to changed from uninterested to very interested and even nostalgic. New Yorkers, even if they are not huge fans of football, respected the Cosmos. The New York Cosmos are a part of our history and that resonates with a lot of locals”.

While it might be seen as a step down for the ambitions of the club to be plying their trade in the NASL after the hype surrounding the relaunch, the Cosmos supporters see the chance to renew old rivalries as an appealing prospect. “Of course it would be nice to be in the MLS, but right now we are rubbing shoulders with other historic rivals like the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ft. Lauderdale Strikers”, says Nick. “That is actually very exciting for many fans. They also have the Open Cup to take on MLS sides so we expect to see some hard battles with the top teams”.

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Red Bull Arena is a modern soccer-specific 25,189 capacity stadium opened in 2010 but the New York Red Bulls do not come close to selling out the ground. It is widely believed that the Red Bulls have not managed to capture the hearts of the NYC faithful because they do not play their games within the five boroughs of the city, instead playing their home matches in Harrison, New Jersey. While the fact that both the New York Jets and Giants of the NFL play their games in East Rutherford, NJ, both teams have roots on the right side of the Hudson river. The Giants started out life in the Bronx and the Jets in Queens. Both outfits share the stadium where Ray Houghton famously lobbed Gianluca Pagliuca when Ireland beat Italy in the 1994 World Cup. The venue was rebuilt in 2010.

While there is a loyal band of Red Bulls supporters, there are a number of factors that might explain some of the apathy New York seems to have for the team says Nick: “I can’t say they haven’t totally captured the hearts of New Yorkers because there is a very dedicated hard core Red Bulls fan base at home games and those people love that club. That being said, many New Yorkers just do not have an attachment to the club and a lot has to do with marketing or lack thereof in a lot of people’s opinions. I have spoken to many fans over the past six years and for some people it is the journey out to Harrison. For others it is the team branding, and some just do not want to root for a team that plays in New Jersey. The beauty of sports is that you make the rules on why or why you don’t support a team”.

In a city which was once seen as the port of entry into the land of the free for immigrants from all over the world, many made New York their home, and walking around the bourgeois avenues of uptown or the bohemian streets of the Village, it is not uncommon to see soccer shirts from around the globe. Manchester United, Barcelona, and Real Madrid, as well as a diverse range of teams, have fans in the Big Apple, be they first second or third generation Italian, Spanish, English etc.

On Saturday lunch times, the bars and pubs are full of EPL supporters shouting for their adopted foreign teams or the sides of their forefathers. In this environment and in an age when NBC Sports paid a $250 million contract for English Premier League broadcast rights, New Yorkers have never fully gotten behind the Red Bulls who have never managed to win a championship.

Nick believes this rings true. “On any given weekend you can spend the whole morning/afternoon watching the top leagues and clubs in the world. They then don’t want to turn around and go out to watch the American game which is not on the same talent level. Some people just want to watch the best”. Laveglia goes on to say: “In this country there are guys that can tell you everything about the English Premier League, were born and raised in America and mock the domestic game.

Yes, the quality is not the same but if you love the game, you watch it on all levels, especially live”. The New York Cosmos do not play at the highest grade in the country, yet are loved at home in New York and the world over.

With no promotion or relegation in American soccer, it will be a number of years before the possibility of seeing Pelé’s former club battling Robbie Keane’s LA Galaxy for the top prize in US soccer. Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, from Battery Park to the top of Manhattan, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Latin, Black and White, however, believe in the Cosmos hype.

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O CANARINHO THE ICONIC JERSEY OF THE SELECAO EPITOMISES SOCCER AND THE WORLD CUP. Words: James Carew Illustration: Jorge Lawerta

Known as ‘O Canarinho’ The Little Canary, it is one of the most iconic images in sport. Yellow flashing with blue on bronzed skin, dancing, darting, with a ball moving like paint strokes. Zig-zags, turns, pass, pass pass. Brazil. The cradle of football. Movers. Masters. The jersey of the Selecao epitomises soccer and the World Cup, and when the tournament kicks off in Sao Paulo on June 12, millions will wear the beloved shirt in a nation besotted with the beautiful game. And yet, the garment wouldn’t exist – certainly not in its current form – without the devastation of Brazil’s loss in the 1950 World Cup final and the subsequent imagination of a 19-year-old from the city of Pelotas.

Brazil is the most successful team in football history with five World Cup titles, four Confederations Cup wins, including the most recent in 2013, and is the only country to feature at every World Cup. As an emblem of the nation, the yellow shirt of the football team has few equals, matching the statue of Cristo Redentor that stands guard over the city of Rio de Janeiro. Below, each evening the beaches play host to scores of Cariocas working a football through the sands towards the wooden goalposts that stand permanently along the coastlines of Ipanema and Copacabana, and the parks around this metropolis that also houses the famous Maracana stadium. It’s a scene repeated all over this land of almost 200 million people.

If England gave football to the world, the Brazilian world is given over to football. It’s generally accepted that Brazil’s first ‘international’ game took place in 1914 involving a Rio de Janeiro/ Sao Paulo selection taking on English side Exeter City. Squabbling between the authorities in both these states would stifle early squads as internal politics within Brazilian football hindered the development of the national team.

The country struggled to make an impression in the infant editions of the World Cup, a competition that would come to define its nationalism.

At the 1930 tournament in neighbouring Uruguay, Brazil were drawn in a group alongside Bolivia and Yugoslavia. In their first ever World Cup game, they were defeated 2-1 by the Yugoslavs. Despite beating Bolivia 4-0 in the second match, Brazil failed to advance to the second round and were out. The bad blood between Sao Paulo and Rio continued to infect the national team and the poor showing was generally blamed on the rivalry between the states. Some reports suggested Sao Paulo officials were prevented from travelling to Uruguay, and in retaliation the Paulista clubs refused to release their players. Four years later, Brazil travelled by boat to Italy, and in a knock-out format, were eliminated after one game, losing 3-1 to Spain. This time, the growing debate between professionalism and amateurism that was bubbling in Brazilian football seeped out in the fall-out from the tournament. This argument would play its part in the reform of the Brazilian football federation after the 1950 competition on home soil, from which the iconic ‘Canarinho’ would emerge.

Things were looking up when Brazil finished third in the 1938 edition with Leonidas da Silva, who some credit with popularising the bicycle kick, earning the accolade of top scorer. The 1942 and 1946 competitions, which Nazi Germany and Brazil sought to host, were cancelled due to the outbreak of World War II in which thousands of Brazilians were sent to Europe to fight alongside the Allied Forces. The World Cup recommenced in 1950 finally coming to Brazil. Five of the host’s matches at the tournament were played at the Maracana, including the final where they suffered a shock 2-1 defeat to Uruguay in front of an official attendance of 174,000. The actual figure was said to be well over 200,000 and at the time, the Maracana was the biggest stadium in the world, surpassing Hampden Park in Glasgow. With the latter stages of the tournament played on a group basis, the Selecáo only required a draw in the final to become World Champions on home soil.

Jorge Lawerta is an illustrator and graphic designer living in Valencia, Spain. His work is a mix of digital and handmade techniques. He has worked for clients including ESPN, Valencia CF, Levante U.D., Foot Locker and El Páis newspaper. www.lawerta.com www.mushroom.es

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6 WHY DO BRAZIL

LEFT-BACKS ALWAYS

WEAR THE NO. 6 SHIRT?

Brazil took the lead through Friaca but Uruguay came storming back. Juan Schiaffino equalised before Alcides Ghiggia scored with just 11 minutes to go to stun the home crowd and clinch the trophy The game would come to be known in Brazilian footballing folklore as the Maracanazo – the Maracana blow.

Decades later Ghiggia remarked: “Only three people in history have managed to silence the Maracana, the Pope, Frank Sinatra and me”. In 2009, Brazil paid tribute to Ghiggia for his role in the game by having his footprints cast in a special pavement at the stadium. The defeat to Uruguay was regarded as a national humiliation. Newspapers had carried headlines of ‘Campeoes’ prior to the game with victory parades already planned. Some say the country has never gotten over the defeat with the sorry tale of the vilification of goalkeeper Moacir Barbosa becoming one of Brazilian football’s most shameful episodes.

Others claim it was the reason for the exclusion of black players from the national team for a time afterwards.

The fall-out from the tournament caused deep soul-searching in Brazilian football. Part of that process deemed the team’s first colours of white shirts with blue collars as unreflective of a growing patriotism. With permission from the Brazilian Sports Confederation, the newspaper Correio da Manhã held a competition to design a new kit incorporating the four colours of the national flag. In the town of Pelota near the border with Uruguay, nineteen-yearold Aldyr Garcia Schlee was working as a newspaper illustrator. He submitted a design of a yellow jersey with green detailing, blue shorts and white socks.

Out of another 300 entries, Schlee’s was chosen as the winner. The new colours were worn for the first time in March 1954 in a match against Chile.

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Years later, Schlee recalled a presentation when the strip was worn for the first time by a player. Five footballers from clubs in Rio were present including Zizinho, who, Schlee recounted, gently took him by the arm, leaned in, smiled and said quietly: “This is all shit”. Schlee went on to become a leading academic who suffered at the hands of the military following the coup in 1964 and was imprisoned on several occasions. It’s deeply ironic that Schlee should fall out of love with football and the capitalism that has come to infect it given that his design became possibly the most famous emblem of his country and has changed little up to the present day.

It was the 1970 World Cup that saw, for the first time, a global television audience exposed to the mesmerising sight of players such as Pelé, Jairzinho, Tostao, and Rivelinho in colour. The captivating movement, fluid control, and rhythm of the team has since seen them become regarded as the greatest of all time.

Enveloping all the magic was the glorious technicolour yellow shirts, blue shorts, white socks and black boots stroking what seemed like an oversized ball.

Black and white panels moving in patterns, as impossibly tanned legs in a blaze of blue, yellow, white, and green, connected and communicated with each other as if dancing. The team came to be known as the Boys from Brazil but the famous names and faces, amongst the most celebrated in the history of sport, are rendered all the more meaningful by the imagery, the colours, the noise. Today the yellow shirt of Brazil is as likely to be found on the astroturf pitches of Dublin as the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. In 1954, it became a symbol of national identity.

Now it’s also a symbol of sporting excellence, but more than that, the beauty of the beautiful game itself.

The number 6 is traditionally more associated with central defenders or midfielders (Roy Keane for Ireland) so why then do Brazilian left-backs wear the number?

Kit numbers were originally used to indicate positions, with starting players being assigned 1–11. The first documented instances of their use in football came in the 1920s. On March 30, 1924, in the United States, the Fall River Marksmen played St. Louis Vesper Buick in the National Challenge Cup. The St Louis side’s kit had both a shirt sponsor and numbering on the back. In England, newpapers noted the development when, on August 25, 1928, numbers were used in the games between Sheffield Wednesday and Arsenal, and Chelsea and Swansea Town. The numbers were based on field position with early defenisve formations in England consisting of two full backs, and three half backs: right, centre, and, left. The backline normally wore numbers 2-6. As formation changes saw positions move, the numbers went with them. For example, the centre half back becoming a central defender, and continuing to wear the number 5.

In Brazil, the 4-2-4 formation developed independently of Europe and was most famously used by the Selecao’s World Cup-winning sides of 1958, 1962 and 1970.

Numbers 3 and 4 were used by the central defenders while the right and left wing backs wore numbers 2 and 6, something that has continued through the decades with players such as Roberto Carlos, and latest incumbent Marcelo.

For the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, the Brazilian Football Confederation forgot to send the player list to the event organisers. Therefore, FIFA assigned random digits resulting in Pelé quite accidentally receiving the number 10.

The jersey has since come to be synonymous with creative players, being worn in recent times by the likes of Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, and Kaka, while Neymar had the honour of filling the shirt during Brazil’s triumphant Confederations Cup campaign.

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DIE ZERBRECHLICHKEIT DES GLÃœCKS

04 FOR 4 MINUTES AND 38 SECONDS, FC SCHALKE WERE THE 2001 GERMAN CHAMPIONS. THEN ANDERSSON STRUCK AND HELL OPENED. Words: Ron Ulrich

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THE FRAGILITY OF HAPPINESS It had to be in this place. The Parkstadion in Gelsenkirchen experienced its last act, and it was such a bang as had not been heard in the history of the Bundesliga. The round oval in the Berger Field had seen many crucial games, even relegation to the second league; dramas, scandals and even times “when we sometimes hadn’t the money for washing powder”, as Charly Neumann, the long-standing team official and soul of the club, once said. Times when the paper beer cups filled with rainwater, among the crumbling, never-ending steps, the croaking loudspeakers, and the high-rising floodlight masts. On one block the people wore T-shirts with the label “Nordkurve” as a statement, a wild part of the stadium. Only here could somebody have the idea to bring a trumpet, where the supporters hurled out the battle-cry “Attack!” Among them stood “Zaunkönig” (the Wren), a man with drums, a grey beard and long hair who was also known because of his appearance as “Catweasle” after the TV show.

“I always stood there. Beside me children grew up and then stood sometimes with their own children”.

19 May, 2001, 15:25 The last game at the stadium. Schalke had battled with Bayern Munich for the title, three points behind but with a better goal difference. For 43 years the Miners had waited for the title, the inaccessible beauty which could now be realised on the final ball. The tabloids had labelled the week before, the “7 second death”.

Schalke topped the table by winning in Stuttgart in the last minute. Seven seconds later Munich scored against Kaiserslautern to seal victory. The beauty had given them the brush-off. Today the Schalke fans nevertheless, hoped for one last dance. The sun beat down, and one didn’t know whether the faces were coloured because of the strain or the heat. On the back straight of the tartan track, a gigantic choreography was prepared by the Schalker fan club, while above an airplane circled with the banner “Thank you Parkstadion”. Officially there were 65,000 spectators in the ground, but whoever believes this number was never there. Every ten seconds, more people climbed the fences to be present. Others had already sat for hours in the construction site behind the arena. At 12 o’clock supply trucks trundled through with the wildly-determined hanging on or jumping on the roof. The dusty coliseum was full and something lay in the air. Manager Rudi Assauer, not wrongfully known as the “last macho of the national league” had become melancholic. He stood in the dugout, a cigar in one hand and with the other wiped tears from his cheeks. Radio reporter Manni Breuckmann sat down for the last time in the place where he had commentated from for so many years. “I felt a relaxed atmosphere”, he remembers. “It didn’t point to the fact that here such drama could still happen”.

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A crazy first half ended. Opponents Unterhaching were 0-2 up after 27 minutes. However, two minutes before the break Nico van Kerckhoven fired the ball to the net to shorten the scoreline to 1-2. Only a minute later Gerald Asamoah with his heel made it 2-2. “What was wrong?” the fans asked themselves at the beer-stands.

Some started to sing: “Sergei Barbarez! Schalalala!” The Hamburg forward had 21 goals for the season, and Schalker hopes now rested on another from him against Bayern Munich. However, in Hamburg it stood 0-0 at the break. Everything spoke to a title for the Bavarians. The TV station picked up an interview with Rudi Assauer and he was asked: “Do you want to congratulate Karl Heinz Rummenige already on the title?” Assauer answered: “No, anything can still happen in football”.

16:58 If thoughts pour lead in the legs, you want players who don’t think too much. It was the 73rd minute. The Parkstadion was quiet. Unterhaching led led 2-3 and the Championship seemed buried. 18 metres out, Jörg Böhme laid down the ball for a free kick. It was possible there was only one space above the 7-headed wall of Unterhaching. His strike slid beneath the jumping opponents: 3-3. Eighty seconds later, Ebbe Sand played in Böhme again, the one they called “the madman”.

He stood alone before Unterhaching’s goalkeeper Gerhard Tremmel, seven metres out. Böhme faked a shot, Tremmel went to his knees and Böhme lifted deftly into the far corner. The fans rejoiced and sang, rose on the fences, their chants overlapped. 4-3 up.

Today the Parkstadion was not a pitch; it was a factory of emotions.

5-3 came in the 90th minute. Schalke had sealed second place for certain. Ebbe Sand lashed out on the drum of a fan. Emile Mpenza kissed the coat of arms. Now “HSV, HSV, HSV!” resounded through the stadium. Former player Andreas Müller ran around the main stand wearing a Hamburg shirt with the name “Kovac” on the back. He had once exchanged jerseys with the HSV player. “I had such a feeling”, he said, “that something could happen”. His superstition seemed to pay off.

Suddenly an announcement filled the air. Something had happened in Hamburg.

17:16 Full Time People writhed like fish on land. Heads stretched in all directions. Isolated cheering shouts were heard, people shook hands. Those with radios to their ears clamped on the handles, never releasing. A mass of 80,000 spectators surged back and forth, between those who knew something, and those who didn’t believe what spread around the ground. In the north curve somebody stood with a mobile phone in his ear. Fans asked him beseechingly: “What’s going on there?” Then he pressed his lips together, eyes glassy, and almost whispered “1-0 for Hamburg. It’s true”. The whispers became louder second by second, a brush fire in every block, and after a while the cheering of singles condensed to a huge scream. The Parkstadion knew it: Schalke 04 would be the German champions.

When hope turned to certainty, the scene imploded.

The fences were pushed, cheering people were rolling down the steps in the south stand. Over and over again, people held themselves with shaky hands to the head.

It was a mixture of trance and hysteria. They felt so close to the sun, it was the moment which the Old Greeks called Kairos. Thomas Spiegel, at that time an office employee, remarked: “People had the feeling that the stadium wobbled. It was like a gate to nirvana”.

His friend Michael Knicker jumped on him with legs and arms in the air. Knicker remembered a conversation before the game. “I had said this morning to dear God: If we become champions, he can take me”. What sounded flippant, was much too serious now. Knicker had suffered a heart-attack the previous year “I hope God does not keep to the arrangement”, they both now thought. They stared in awe at the television in the press area which showed the game in Hamburg.

“I was paralysed”, said Spiegel. “I incessantly stammered like an insane man only three words: Stop the game!

Stop the game! Stop the game!” On Kurt Schumacher Street in the Schalker market, a taxi driver screeched to a halt and shouted: “Hamburg leads! Hamburg leads!

Hamburg leads!” Here also people pounced on one another, and the traffic stopped.

17:18 In the Parkstadion, trainer Huub Stevens waved an admonishing hand in front of the players’ bench where Nico van Kerckhoven was performing chin-ups. Stevens sent the players to the changing rooms. Some remained on the pitch together with Rudi Assauer, Andreas Müller and board member Jürgen W. Möllemann. Now thousands in the stadium hung on the lips of two men, one sat directly amongst them. “The game in Schalke is over. We wait for release”, said the commentator Manni Breuckmann.

A false alarm surfaced that the Hamburg match had already ended. Over and over again Breuckmann got up to inform the people to calm, waving his arms.

“Nevertheless, it brought nothing. Nobody got it. My colleague Mr. Alex Bleick still reported from Hamburg.

The play ran and I was the only one in my vicinity who knew it. An absurd situation”. The false alarm had several stages. Shortly after the final whistle in Schalke it emerged for the first time that the game in Hamburg had also finished. Rudi Assauer shouted to Nico van Kerkhovwn: “It is not over yet!” Assauer had become the indicator for all onlookers. Quickly everything calmed down. Then came Assauer’s gesture. He was informed again that play in Hamburg had ended, and he made an uppercut like a boxer. Beside him Jiri Nemec smiled - for the Czech, an unbelievable emotional outburst. The fireworks on the occasion of the last game in the Parkstadion began - however, even the blasting of the rockets was swallowed by the background noise in the stadium. Fans stormed the place, the false alarm had burst and could not be detained any more. Exactly at this moment a flicker appeared on the video screen above the south curve which should have started directly after the final whistle in Gelsenkirchen, but there had been a technical fault. The last minutes from Hamburg were being aired in the stadium.

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Many thought it was a replay. This could not stop the insanity. Pitch-side reporter Rolf Fuhrmann congratulated Andreas Müller on the championship, behind them the play ran in Hamburg on the screen.

“I do not know how it stands”, said Müller. “It has ended in Hamburg, you are champions”, replied Fuhrmann.

Müller was handed an oversized Pils glass. “Every time I have met Fuhrmann afterwards, he has apologised to me. He was very sorry”, Muller would later remark.

Parts of the stadium celebrated the title, others looked to the screen, and soon realised that it was not a repeat.

“It was as if one watched his own burial”, a fan described it. Goalkeeper Oliver Reck lay under the table in the dressing room where the players watched the last minutes in Hamburg on the television. “Something will still happen”, he said to Andreas Müller. “I know it, oh God”. When captain Tomasz Waldoch wanted to go to the media representatives, Reck held his arm.

“Tommy, it is not over yet!”

17:20 From a free-kick inside the box Patrick Andersson thrashes home for the Bavarians to make it 1-1. Bayern were champions. The news went straight to the blood.

In the south curve in Gelsenkirchen an old man slumped; “I just wanted to be champions - once”, Rudi Assauer reeled in the direction of the tunnel. On the pitch many fans broke down howling, others lacked the strength to cry. The plug had been pulled on the gigantic concert of elation. A scary silence descended on the stadium.

The only sound was the unceasing blasting of the rockets like the orchestra that played on the sinking Titanic. The author Steffen Kopetzky, a Munich supporter, later wrote for Zeit: “As a Bayern fan, I never felt more lonely and desperate than at this moment. Schalke were not German champions anymore”.

17:25 On the pitch, fans were mourning, in the catacombs Ebbe Sand had collapsed into himself. He crouched down on the ground, as bottles and chairs flew through the changing room. “Benches, doors, televisions nothing remained. Luckily nobody sent us the bill”, said Marco Van Hoogdalem. Youri Mulder laughed without wanting to. “I have spoken sometimes with a cyclist. He says other cyclists laugh when speeding downhill because they are so nervous and have no control of their emotions. That’s just how I felt at this moment”. Jörg Böhme lit himself a cigarette.

Rudi Assauer and Huub Stevens tried unsuccessfully to comfort the players. Minutes later in the press conference Assauer remarked. “Do not not tell me any more that footballers are ice-cold.” Then followed his oft-quoted line; “I have lost faith in the god of football”.

“I have never experienced this quick transformation from the highest feeling to this infinite grief”, said Manni Breuckmann as he looked out on the playing field from the press area. Trainer Huub Stevens’ face went hard as he called the team together congratulating them on the achievement of the season and reminding that the following Saturday they still had a title to play for, the German cup final. Then he sent them out to the stand to the fans who remained below on the pitch.

One supporter shouted in the silence. It was the most simple call: “Schaaaaaalke!” He repeated before more and more joined in. The team stood as “You’ll Never Walk Alone” was played, and Huub Stevens finally lost his fight with tears. Later, around 200 fans were there still mulling around the Parkstadion; they simply couldn’t go home. Rudi Assauer stepped out from his office onto the balcony and delivered a blazing speech.

On the Monday morning 15,000 fans showed up to the last training session before the cup final. A few days later Schalke defeated Union Berlin to claim the “Pott”.

And in the Schalke section of the Berlin Olympic stadium, a banner read “Everything will be fine”.

EPILOGUE From that day, the Schalke fans always refer to “19 Mai”.

The dream of the championship is forever discussed by supporters on away journeys; their own biographies intersect at this point. Everybody knows how they experienced those four minutes and 38 seconds.

Lifetime club stalwart Charly Neumann later said: “I hope the dear God lets me take the championship trophy to our stadium one more time”. In 2007, as Schalke lost the championship to arch-rival Borussia Dortmund, Neumann who was seriously ill, insisted he be taken to the Schalke fans’ section. First quietly, then louder the chant built around the stand. The fans cheered for several minutes “Charly Charly.”

Neumann died on November 11 2008, his final prayer still unfulfilled.

Ron Ulrich writes for cult German football magazine 11freunde, where this article was first published. www.11freunde.de

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GABRIEL UCHIDA

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Gabriel Uchida is a Brazilian journalist who has been closely following football supporters, ultras and hooligans since 2009. www.fototorcida.com.br

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DAVE MERRELL

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“I was born and raised in Flixton and brought up to follow the blue side of Manchester. I create artwork that reflects personal nostalgia and emotion, and try to convey that in what I produce. After many years of trying to perfect my drawing skills, I realised I should never want to perfect them, but to learn and evolve as long as time will allow. The style manifested itself whilst leisurely sketching a Stormtrooper’s body armour. The football angle of my work came when I was approached by Fantasista organisers, who wanted to feature my work in the inaugural exhibition of football art. I’ve always had a passion for football, being a player and a spectator so being able to conjoin drawing and football is fantastic.

My influences come in the forms of Marcel Duchamp, Alex Ross and Drew Struzan to name but a few”. www.davemerrell.com

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THE LEAGUE OF IRELAND HAS COME THROUGH PAINFUL YEARS RECENTLY, LOSING SOME CLUBS WHILE SOME OF THE GIANTS HAVE ALSO FLIRTED WITH EXTINCTION, BUT THE LEVEL OF SUPPORTER INVOLVEMENT HERE IS NOW AMONG THE HIGHEST IN EUROPE WITH ALMOST ALL OF THE TOP-FLIGHT SIDES NOW HAVING PART OR TOTAL FAN-OWNERSHIP. Words: James Carew Illustration: The Printi Printer

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MUCH WAS MADE OF THE FACT THAT THE TWO TEAMS CONTESTING THE 2013 CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL WERE FAN-OWNED ENTITIES IN THE BUNDESLIGA. There is a train of thought that clubs where supporters have a pivotal role in how they are run is the way forward for long-term sustainability and you don’t have to look far to see that Irish football is ahead of the game in this regard.

Shelbourne are one of the latest clubs to embrace fan involvement in an official capacity with the recent launch of the 1895 Trust while the Cork City FORAS are also leading the way.

Shelbourne have endured tough years since the passing of their legendary Chief-Executive Ollie Byrne. Threatened with disappearing completely and relegated from the Premier Division, many people have worked hard to revive the fortunes of the famous Drumcondra club. Now the supporters have organised themselves to become partners in the progression of their beloved Shels. The 1895 Trust has worked closely with Supporters Direct Europe, the experts on spectator involvement and ownership, towards securing the long term sustainability of the club and fulfil their aims which include achieving a mutually fan-owned Shelbourne FC. Lee Daly is the chair of the Trust.

What drove you to get involved?

I don’t see my own involvement as all that important but among the people who have become involved, whether as members, volunteers or committee members, there is a common desire to see a stable football club and an agreement that a Supporters Trust is a good way of doing it.

You’ve had a lot of co-operation with FORAS, the fans’ Trust behind Cork City FC and the EU-funded Improving Football Governance project.

Niamh O’Mahony, a former board member of FORAS, has provided a lot of knowledge and support to us, from advising on events and setting up a committee properly. Sean O’Conaill, another former FORAS board member, also helped out immensely with our rules. There is a lot of exciting work going on with collaboration between supporters in Dundalk, Galway, Cork and Dublin.

Shelbourne almost went to the wall a couple of years ago. Was that where the Trust was borne from?

It hasn’t been motivated by any one event in particular, just a group of fans coming together and thinking it was a good idea, introducing it to the wider fan-base and taking it from there.

Supporters’ Trusts have a role to play at every club, regardless of the prevailing circumstances. A lot of people have worked hard to try and right the ship at Shels, as has also happened at Bohs and in a lot of other situations but trying to place clubs on a sustainable footing in the long term requires a structured voice, something a Supporters Trust can provide.

Ultimately, is the aim for the Trust and the fans to take over the club like Cork and Rovers? This seems to be the way forward not just for Irish clubs, but football in Europe as a whole.

We see the future of Shelbourne as being one where fans mutually own the club they support, as is the case in a lot of countries like Sweden and Germany, and with a few clubs in Ireland and the UK. The exact mechanics and specifics of that journey are something we will have to work to figure out.

Tolka Park was once the beacon for stadium facilities in Ireland but as the club struggled, the emphasis on facilities dropped away. Is that something that could be revived?

Is the future of the club in improving the stadium to attract fans, or developing more of a production line from youth teams, or is the model of a fan-owned club something that might ultimately swell supporter numbers?

Probably all of those things in some form or another but the club is, like many others in the league, straddled with significant debts. This makes investment difficult to attract and places an emphasis on keeping things ticking over on a day to day basis. Where the Trust might play a role is in providing some form of investment, whether it is in a facility, an asset or the club itself.

As a registered co-operative, the Trust essentially operates like a business, albeit a non-profit one. That means fans’ money is as good as any other investors and has to be treated with proper care and diligence.

1 Fan One Vote print by The Printi Printer.

The dead slow results service hand-cut and hand-printed for every Liverpool FC result. www.printiprinter.tumblr.com

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The trust had been in touch with Supporters Direct and, along with representatives of that organisation, embarked on some preliminary case work around the country in late 2010.

It was on the back of that involvement that FORAS was asked to be part of a group that was to apply for European Commission funding in July 2011. The proposal was approved in October the same year, and FORAS became the lead organisation in Ireland for the Improving Football Governance through Supporter Involvement and Community Ownership project. There are seven other countries, nine organisations, involved in total, but the Irish project has gone really, really well to date.

Created from the official supporters club, the Cork City FORAS trust became the saviours of the southern giant as she flirted with extinction. The Turners Cross outfit are now the driving force in Ireland behind an EC initiative on football governance. Niamh O’Mahony is a former Board and Trust member at Cork City and is the project manager of the EC Improving Football Governance through Supporter Involvement and Community Ownership project.

What drove you and others to get involved?

The origins of FORAS can be traced back to the club’s official supporters group.

It was during the time of Brian Lennox, a respected chairman and FORAS member today, that the idea was first mooted but it was not until August of 2008 that the trust was ready to launch.

Unfortunately, the club had come under the ownership of an investment fund by the name of Arkaga in the interim period and went into examinership around the same time. The purpose of the supporters’ trust, which was set up initially with the objective of being supportive to the club, quickly became a focus for supporter action. The trust set up hardship funds for both the players and staff for instance and also actively engaged with the examiner throughout the examinership period.

The thought of losing your football club is a very powerful fear and supporters’ trusts allow supporters to come together in a legally-based and formal way to harness the idea of community ownership. FORAS, which now owns Cork City Football Club, is a co-operative and operates under a One Man, One Vote principle. Anyone can get involved by paying the fees and if you’re involved for more than a year, you can run for election to the Board.

That ideal, that people can come together and collectively match what private business and individuals have offered football for decades, is what led me personally to get involved, and I know it has been the same for others over time. We, essentially, are the gaffers, and though trustees are not directly involved in day-to-day decision making, they have a huge influence on the ethos of the club and where both it and FORAS are headed in the future.

Could you elaborate on the involvement with the UK and European fans projects?

Having successfully entered the Airtricity League First Division as Cork City FORAS Co-op (until the club later bought the intellectual property of Cork City Football Club and its name) in 2010, clubs and supporters groups around the country started to get in touch and ask for advice and support.

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THE THOUGHT OF LOSING YOUR FOOTBALL CLUB IS A VERY POWERFUL FEAR

A survey of League of Ireland and Irish football fans was conducted online and around a number of grounds in Autumn 2012. A two-day conference was held in Cork that November and we have launched a handbook aimed at helping clubs and supporters’ organisations become more proactive about their own situations. There are great examples to learn from in League of Ireland football and we are hopeful that the project will be the founding stone for a more sustained level of co-operation and support between supporters-run clubs and groups and all other stakeholders in Irish football. We can also learn lessons from our European counterparts, more than anything it’s time that League of Ireland clubs realise that we don’t have to do battle on our own.

Cork almost went to the wall a couple of years ago; was that where the Trust was borne from?

It’s a common myth that supporters’ trusts are simply takeover vehicles though. Our initial objective was to raise funds and build an asset that could be shared with the club at minimal costs; however, events over took everyone and we now find ourselves owning and running our football club on a daily basis.

The trust has over 650 members today and remains true to another founding principle, the guardianship of League of Ireland football in the county. The EC Project mentioned above, however, is an example of how the trust still has a very relevant role to play alongside running the football club.

This seems to be the way forward not just for Irish clubs, but football in Europe as a whole?

In short, yes. Supporters Direct research has shown that having fans involved in the game in meaningful ways has a number of significant benefits including better financial stability, transparency and higher rates of active citizenship (volunteers to you and me).

We are hearing a lot about German football at the moment with Bayern

and Dortmund in the 2013 Champions League final, and while the Bundesliga still has its own issues, the fact that they are members clubs is a very significant factor in the league’s set up. There is also a similar situation in Sweden where all sporting organisations must be owned at least 50% +1 by its members. However, these types of rules and regulations, even though they seem ideal to many of us in Ireland and the UK, are under pressure from private interests, many of whom are keen to make money from a sport that has so much more to give and was never intended for profit making. And that is why we are seeing increased calls for better supporter involvement in football across Europe, a position supported by UEFA and the European Commission amongst others.

Take Spain’s La Liga as another example.

Outside the big two of Barcelona and Real Madrid, Spanish football is genuinely in crisis, to the point that the story of FORAS and what is happening in the League of Ireland was seen as an inspiration at an event that I attended and spoke at in Madrid back in January 2013. Football was never meant to be a battle of the biggest wage budgets.

Authorities and football associations are aware of this issue and acting through initiatives such as the Financial Fair Play.

However, there is much more that can be done and supporters, as the most important stakeholder in the game, need to be involved in what happens next.

Is the future of the club in further improving the stadium to attract fans, or developing more of a production line from youth teams, or is the model of a fan-owned club something that might ultimately swell supporter numbers?

I’m going to borrow a line from a fellow former board members, Sonya O’Neill, to answer this one. At Cork City FC, the reality is that the supporters are the most ambitious owners that the club has ever had. We want everything for our football club, a great stadium to play in, fantastic training facilities, big crowds, quality players, a great youths system, community projects and initiatives, strong player development, a communityorientated ethos, transparency, openness, to be an integral part of the sporting and social scene in the county and to have success on the field. However, the latter will not be sought at any cost. There are no white knights in Irish football, no American tycoons and no Middle Eastern billionaires. It’s the supporters that are saving some of the biggest names in Irish domestic football and with proper governance and legal structures behind them, the future is starting to look brighter and brighter.

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HOOLIGANISM IN IRISH SPORT IN THE 1970s AND 80s.

Words: Donal Fallon

THE ENGLISH DISEASE? While hooliganism came to be known as ‘The English Disease’, and was thus always associated first and foremost with The Beautiful Game, a comparison of crowd violence at Irish domestic soccer games and Gaelic Athletic Association events in the 1970s and 80s reveals some surprising facts. Indeed, it seems that crowd trouble at GAA games was not alone as much of a concern to the authorities, but on occasion the violence far surpassed anything the crowds in Dalymount Park or Milltown could offer up.

There is now an abundance of material out there on the history of football hooliganism, and football casuals, from a British perspective. Casuals were essentially young English football fans who rejected rattles, scarves and official club bobble hats in the 1970s for designer chic labels, and the style they developed is still commonplace in football stadiums today among young connoisseurs. Books like Casuals: The Story of a Terrace Fashion Cult from Phil Thornton, Dressers, which examined the Saturday Service Crew at Motherwell and the autobiographical Cass from former West Ham United casual Cass Pennant have all proven to be a commercial success. To date, no real study of Irish football violence has emerged, though there is quite a story to be told, involving ‘Bootboys’, confrontation and a panicked media.

There was nothing new about trouble on Irish terraces in the 1970s. The Munster Express complained in November 1968 for example of the “Half-witted gutty element” at Richmond Park, a “minority lunatic fringe” who had attached themselves to Saint Patrick’s Athletic, but there was certainly a marked increase in coverage from the 1970s. In the summer of 1970, the Irish Independent complained that “teenage terrace thuggery” had emerged during the classic Dublin derby of Shamrock Rovers and Bohemians. Still, the paper noted that: “Fortunately Irish soccer has not been plagued so far with widespread outbreaks of violence among spectators as has marred the games image across the channel and drastic steps to stem the trouble at source are to be recommended”.

Donal Fallon writes for Come Here To Me! A group blog that focuses on the life and culture of Dublin City. Music, history, football, politics and pub crawls all feature, along with much more. www.comeheretome.com

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At Sligo Rovers, a noticeable ‘Bootboy’ element appeared from the early 1970s. While a New Spotlight article on the emerging Skinhead youth culture in Ireland in 1970 went to great lengths to inform readers that “all Skinheads are not troublemakers, but there are some who just can’t keep free of trouble”, the perception of Sligo’s skinhead following was rather different. Fans of the West of Ireland club acquired a reputation in the national media. An October 1975 Irish Independent article noted that Sligo seemed to be acquiring a youth following whose “interest in the game certainly comes a poor second to their desire to incite trouble”. In 1976 suspended prison sentences and hefty fines were handed to six Sligo fans for football violence in Galway, all aged between 16 and 23, with the Connacht Sentinel

reporting the Judge as stating “this is the type of terrace thuggery now coming to Ireland”, and drawing the comparison to the English problem. A comment left by a reader on the Come Here To Me blog referenced being among the Sligo Rovers faithful at a game in Dalymount Park in 1978, and that “For anyone curious about terrace fashion – it was wall to wall DMs, half-mast flared Wranglers, and too-tight denim jackets”.

The influence of the conflict in the North of Ireland on the game was, at times, quite alarming. Sectarian tensions emerged at certain clashes, for example with the visits of sides like Linfield and Glasgow Rangers.

When Linfield visited Dundalk in 1979, the violence was so severe that authorities ordered the second clash be played in mainland Europe. Journalist Peter Byrne wrote after the clash that “this was the night when the concept of All-Ireland club football was killed stone dead”.

Not far from Dalymount Park, sits GAA HQ Croke Park.

It saw its own problems emerge in the 70s and 80s, and its a crucial fact to point out is that unlike in the case of soccer, this violence could not simply be blamed on ‘The English Influence’. A 1973 match between Derry and Kerry saw dozens of Derry fans take to the pitch and assault the referee, before engaging in a pitched battle with Gardaí, ultimately resulting in a £500 fine for the County Board. A vivid account of the hooliganism was provided by The Irish Times: “Life and limb were seriously at risk following the National Football League semi final between the title-holders Kerry, and Derry at Croke Park yesterday, when a large group of young men and youths waged a pitched battle with Gardaí on the field and under the Hogan Stand”.

To GAA authorities, the Hill 16 crowd were a cause of concern. Indeed, in 1975 the Director General of the Gaelic Athletic Association contacted Man United, to enquire about the cost of the fencing that had been erected around Old Trafford to prevent hooligan elements encroaching on the pitch. Dublin fans, on their own patch, could also cause trouble for the authorities outside of the stadium, for example in 1984, when there was serious rioting following the defeat of the Dubs in an All-Ireland Football Final. Newspapers reported “Some 250 youths involved in incidents in which more than 40 people, including Gardaí, were injured”.

This was above and beyond anything that had been witnessed at soccer matches which were not tinged with political or sectarian tensions, such as the visits of Glasgow Rangers or Linfield. In 1985, the issue of violence in Irish sporting grounds arose in the Dáil.

Michael Noonan proclaimed that: “GAA supporters are very well behaved. There is a particular problem with soccer, especially when British teams are involved.

That is generally accepted. It is not as likely to happen at an All-Ireland final”. Perhaps, as one T.D quipped across the chamber, he had never stood on Hill 16.

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ANOTHER 48 HOURS LAYTH YOUSIF RECALLS A BUSY TWO DAYS WITH SKY SPORTS, SHADOWING ROVING REPORTER JOHNNY PHILLIPS, AUTHOR OF ‘SATURDAY AFTERNOON FEVER, A YEAR ON THE ROAD FOR SOCCER SATURDAY’.

Words: Layth Yousif

Jeff Stelling is two desks down looking me straight in the eye. He is making a joke at his expense featuring an interview he did with Jurgen Klopp. Olivia Godfrey politely smiled at me in the canteen earlier and that evening I meet Paul Merson and Emile Heskey. Welcome to 48 frenetic hours in the world of Sky Sports and their reporter Johnny Phillips.

Friday 10am -1pm: I sit with Phillips as he and editor Matt put together a piece for tomorrow’s Soccer Saturday show highlighting Norwich loan signing Kei Kamara. The emotive piece details his early life in Sierra Leone where he played football under the shadow of bullets, to playing College football in the States at the same campus where LA Galaxy train, and where he met David Beckham. It was reassuring to know the congenial Phillips feels the same as many of the two million fans who regularly watch the show. The Liverpudlian said: “I still feel like a kid in a sweetshop. I love my job. I told the producer that we had a lad with a moving back-story who was worth talking to and he agreed. I took a cameraman up to Norwich, did the interview, wrote it up and as you saw spent Friday morning editing it”.

What I saw was two professionals pouring over the piece in an editing suite in Sky Centre. At one stage there is even a debate about the sound levels of a ball hitting the net. Johnny reads the words he has written in a microphone that immediately gets transposed onto their work. When a line doesn’t work he quickly tweaks it without notes. “We have a system where every second of every game since the Premiership started is packaged into bite sized chunks, with all the actions labelled and then given a unique reference number”, he tells me. For the Kei piece they need Norwich footage of him. The system displays the minutiae of what we as viewers at home take for granted in dry language: “00:01 Chris Hughton shakes hands with David Moyes. 00:03 Hughton sits down”.

2pm: Sky have a sound system which is an archive of every song recorded bar the Beatles (due to licensing restrictions).

For Phillip’s Luis Suarez piece opening Soccer Saturday, he debates a littleknown post-punk bank and their 1979 song called ‘There’s a cloud over Liverpool’ to be played on the package. In most professions blokes talking about obscure independent bands would be told to get back to work. Here, it is work. Johnny says: ‘I love the freedom of being able to cut a VT like Kei. Apart from the enjoyable mechanics of editing and producing it, he’s had an interesting life and was a pleasure to chat to him’.

What about those players who are, shall we say, less captivating than the Norwich forward? “You just have to be professional, do your best, and try and engage with them to get a quote.

It can be quite hard sometimes”, he says diplomatically.

What makes a good story for Johnny are the characters behind the headlines.

“I am just finishing off a book detailing unsung people and players who are every bit as important as the big stars”.

Such as? “Remember that lad down at Swansea, James Thomas?” he asks me, continuing, “Called up for Wales away to Azerbaijan, 2002. Didn’t get on.

Swansea beat Hull 4-2 on the last day of the 2002-03 season and Thomas scored a hat-trick to stop them being relegated to the conference.”

“Soon after, James got a bad injury; never hit the heights again and now works as a Swansea ambulance man”. It should be a film I suggest.

“Exactly!” Johnny replies.

“We did a piece on him, what struck me was that he didn’t have an ounce of bitterness”. Phillips revealed that his (Irish-born) dad actually came up with the name of the book: “Saturday Afternoon Fever”.

Layth Yousif is an Arsenal fan & cricket lover. Published in Arsenal magazine, Evening Standard, Sunday People, WSC, Four-Four-Two, Gooner, IBWM, Sabotage Times and Inside Left.

Twitter: @laythy29

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4pm: Stelling is again studying his stack of notes. His legendary powers of recall are the programme’s lifeblood. He mentions the Hartlepool supporters who are travelling to Crawley the next day dressed as Penguins. “Last year it was Smurfs!” he booms in obvious delight. Stelling looks in rude health and obviously loves his trade. He is also good company. Yet I am slightly disconcerted when raconteur Jeff uses an expletive, it’s like hearing your gran swear. Johnny tells me a little story about Jeff and the boys’ Christmas party last year.

“We went to a restaurant in Liverpool.

There were loads of couples there, but as we walked in all these blokes stopped eating and stared at Jeff Stelling instead!

Dowie’s such a bad dancer,” he adds.

“He actually looked like David Brent”.

6pm: With a balanced Suarez piece canned, Johnny arranges it so I can sit in the studio gallery as they film Fantasy Football.

7.30pm: Emile Heskey is talking about his best XI. I ask Darius Merriman, the shows Associate Producer whether guests overrun. “Yes”, he replies, “we’ve had it where someone has taken five minutes and is still talking about their left back”.

What happens then?

“We get them to hurry-up”, he says laconically. The show is eventually in the can with viewers none the wiser about the controlled chaos behind the scenes.

Is it always like this I ask?

“It’s the most stressful hour of the week”, confirms a visibly relieved Darius.

Saturday 11am: I meet Johnny at Euston Station to get the train to Northampton. We travel up with pensive Barnet supporters.

“You feel for the fans on a day like this”, he tells me. If Barnet win they are safe from relegation. It’s already been a traumatic week for Bees fans, as they played their last game at Underhill after 106 years of history.

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1.30pm: “What are you doing here you’re normally at big games?” a huge but cheery security guard at Northampton’s ground Sixfields asks Johnny. He replies goodnaturedly; “This is a big game”. We meet the cameraman and walk onto the pitch.

“We need to grab thirty seconds with Edgar Davids”, Johnny asks a man in a Barnet tracksuit who has wondered past.

“Sorry, no”, comes the reply.

“How ‘bout his number two” Phillips inquires.

“What, Ollie?”

“Yes Ollie”, Johnny blags as the man nods and sets off to fetch Ollie. A desperate search through the match programme reveals Ollie to be Dutchman Ulrich Landvreugd. “No wonder they call him Ollie”, says the cameraman with a smile.

Interview done we set up for Johnny to give regular match updates. “I would much rather not feature if the show was great TV with Merse going bonkers over a cracking goal,” he tells me. “The last thing I would want is to give a ‘ticker-tape’ report. I try to explain things with a little colour. But I remember ‘drying’ at a Coventry, Burnley game. I described a Wade Elliot cross into the centre where Robbie Blake scored. But I couldn’t recall his name. I said “Elliot crossed the ball for, er, um, who did score Jeff?”

4.57pm: The final whistle goes. Barnet are relegated from League Two. Their players and fans are simply devastated. I spot a young Barnet fan in tears. A middle aged man says kindly. “Chin up young fella”. Phillips does his last piece and takes off his headset. Mischievously I ask Johnny what Beatles song springs to mind. Quick as a flash he comes back with “You say goodbye, I say hello”.

6.15pm: Davids strides onto the pitch to meet assembled hacks. Looking impossibly cool in a brown linen suit with red slip on deck shoes and gold Cartier sunglasses he is asked: “Is this the worst moment of your career?” Davids replies deadpan: “I have lost a Champions League final”.

Johnny gets his interview after the pressmen have finished, and we are done.

6.35pm: We grab some light refreshment at the Working Mens Club next to the train station. Johnny tells me modestly, “I have been lucky to have been in the right place at the right time. I feel very privileged to do what I do. I try to never forget that”.

3.00pm–3.52pm: A tense scrappy first half. Phillips watches the game like a hawk. He is resolutely unflappable on camera.

4.28pm: At one point in the second half whilst preparing to go live on air he loses his feed just as Jeff Stelling makes what can only be described as a honking noise whilst referencing the Hartlepool penguins.

4.31pm: If Barnet don’t lose, Wimbledon are down.

But in the 68th minute Roy O’Donovan scores for Northampton. Johnny has to go straight back on air to describe the goal, coping with the noise from celebrating Northampton fans.

Guttridge adds another five minutes later. 2-0. Cobblers fans sing “Bye-bye to the Football League” to their Bees counterparts. Locked out Northampton fans on the grass bank above are celebrating. It’s that kind of day. Over the headphones Stelling reads out results and their consequences.

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THE DIABLO ROUGE WITH A DIVINE GIFT Words: Layth Yousif Illustration: Davey Blackett

Illustrator Davey Blackett is creating a drawing of a footballer each day for a year, up to the World Cup in Brazil. www.worldcupdraw.tumblr.com

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A federation once asked a great man to compile a list of the 100 best players of the last century. Most people would have scoffed at such a foolish idea. But being a great man he tried to please everybody and agreed he would - and ended up pleasing nobody. A number of footballers complained, moaned and bitched about being left off the list. Others whined about the order they were placed in.

While even more complained about colleagues who did make the roll-call.

Even the federation objected to the list.

Which was kind of funny because irony was never one of their strengths.

A Belgian Number 10 straight from the old school didn’t. He could have lamented his luck at being left out. All he said was: “I am happy with my career.

I wouldn’t change a thing”. Why would he? After all he played in four World Cups.

He also scored one of the best goals ever to be forgotten in a tournament.

Shamefully even the federation who asked the great man for the list did not recall it.

17 June 1990. Stadio Marc’Antonio Bentegodi, Verona. 33,759 souls watch the Red Devils play La Celeste, Uruguay. 22 minutes: Jan Ceulemans receives the ball.

“I had my head screwed on and winning things didn’t change that. In fact winning was something that never changed me.

That was my strength. I was a competitor and being ambitious and wanting to win things was normal for me”.

After a succession of one touch passes Van Der Elst plays the ball out to the left flank.

“If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would do things exactly the same way”.

Belgium, Les Diables Rouges, had been semi-finalists four years previously. Only for the King of the Gods, Jupiter, to hurl a thunderbolt at the footballing world in the shape of a dirt poor urchin from Villa Fiorito, a shantytown on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires, who made people laugh and weep in equal measure. The Red Devils lost 2-0 to one man, Diego Maradona.

“Mexico 1986 was a wonderful adventure”, says Enzo Scifo. “There was a real desire to do well. And above all we had a lot of strong personalities who pushed the national team to the top. You need that kind of spirit if you’re going to succeed in football”.

“Arsene Wenger once said that every player should go through a bad patch in their careers so they can learn how to handle disappointment. In my opinion you should come face to face with it as early as possible in your career, and I can honestly say that I don’t have any regrets”.

The ball comes back inside to Van Der Elst again.

“After 14 years abroad and a lot of sacrifices I had this desire to go back to the club where I started out and to achieve something. And it paid off when I won my last league title with Anderlecht”.

Who then lays a slide rule pass across the midfield to an onrushing Enzo Scifo.

“1990, was a great year for me, first with Auxerre and then with the national side”.

Scifo imperceptibly skips to adjust his stride and body angle before rifling in a preposterous 40 yard goal to the utter joy of his team-mates and assembled crowd.

“1990 was the best Belgium team we’ve ever had”.

Even now old men toast their losing semi-finalists with finely brewed beer.

They also toast a goal scored by their man with Sicilian blood raised in a region immortalised in Zola’s Germinal.

In the rough mining belt of La Louvière, Wallonia. “It was a tough area. It doesn’t matter how old you are when you start; the important thing is to be ready for it.

Even back then I wanted to be involved and was mature for my age. That helped me make my mark. I was lucky enough to spend my formative years in a big team, though you have to be mentally strong, which is not always the case when you’re that young. All I had to do then was show that I deserved an opportunity”.

The federation judged the goal to be one of the best ever scored at a tournament run by them. They called it a divine goal by a player with a divine gift. Then promptly forgot all about it.

Years later the great man had his list published and many said it was a wonderful compilation. Even if Enzo Scifo, old school playmaker and his talents from the gods did not feature.

“A professor once wondered how I could have played for so long with a hip in such a state”, Scifo recalled after he retired. “He said that with such a long term injury, I couldn’t have been a very good player”. The professor must have been a friend of the great man who produced the list.

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ZIDANE: A FRACTION OF THE WHOLE Words: Luke Constable

Luke Constable writes for Ruud Gullit Sitting on a Shed. www.rgsoas.wordpress.com

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Do you remember seeing Escape To Victory for the first time? I know I do.

I was a young child with a nascent interest in football, just discovering this interesting new world, so the very thought that there was a film about football – a film! – made it essential viewing. The plot details will be familiar to all by now, but just in case you’d forgotten, the glorious zenith of the football match around which the film is focussed was Pelé’s overhead kick.

It was supposed to epitomise the film’s central message – that sport can triumph over just about anything, even those bloody Nazis. Discussions would’ve taken place among scriptwriters, the director, perhaps even Pelé himself, to decide how best to physically represent the emotional impact of the goal, and they decided on a move that has since become the Brazilian’s trademark of sorts.

By decree of Hollywood, the bicycle kick was the single most skilful thing a footballer could do. And yet I never liked it. As a child, my inner curmudgeon deconstructed the nonsensical simulacrum of Pelé’s slow-motion heroics. I dismissed it, realising how artificial it was. I knew it was obviously not a real game, but it was surely meant to look like one, and yet did not. It was inconceivable to me that anyone could ever get away with such a moment of flamboyance and daring without being clattered by a centre-half. Worse, a Nazi centre-half, surely the worst sort of centre-half there is. My ten-year-old thinking, not yet equipped with words such as ‘curmudgeon’ and ‘simulacrum’, was loosely along these lines: “Football’s not like that”. Despite my callow youth, I was somehow utterly convinced that the real game could never be like that, so perfect, and felt that football in the real world could only ever struggle in vain to emulate a moment of such stage-crafted brilliance.

Of course, I would eventually be proven wrong any number of times throughout my life, and discover to my joy that football can be that good, even better in fact. There is one brief moment of footballing joie de vivre which demonstrates that better than any other, and occurred when France played Portugal at Euro 2000.

You will likely have seen the clip before in various video montages, specifically those illustrating the brilliance of the man in question. It was this dizzying moment of chest control from Zinedine Zidane, a moment when sport and art were joined in perfect symbiosis, and the promise of beauty and performance were somehow capable of a man simply running after a ball. It stands as a portrait capturing how sporting endeavour and physical motion can intersect and become something closer to ballet. Whenever I think of Zidane, I think of that moment, where the flight of the ball was the master of his will, and the synapses linking brain and body were somehow closer than those of mortals. Whenever I think of that moment, for some reason, I think of Escape To Victory.

For Zidane to seemingly slow the game down in such an act of deftness, speed of thought and corporeal mastery: it was art house cinema to the showbiz glitz of Pele’s scripted pyrotechnics. Whenever I see that clip of Zidane, it plays out in my mind’s eye as the Pelé overhead kick was meant to play out before my actual eyes. I transpose the lilting, uplifting whistles and twinkles of the film’s score as Pelé twists skyward, applying it to the Frenchman and making it real. The move didn’t even result in a goal, which only makes it greater for living in the memory as it has done. The reason that I’ve taken to comparing Zidane’s moment of skill to Pelé’s is because that is how football at its most spellbinding is really meant to look.

Zidane managed in real life what Pelé took a film crew, a contrived dribbling sequence and two slow-motion replays to do. That is what you get when a footballer makes football look like theatre.

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